The Ministry for Infrastructure, Transport and Communications (MITC), through the Department of Contracts, has issued an invitation to tender for the development and operation of an e-mall.
An e-mall is a web-based virtual marketplace which provides an end-to-end solution to participant merchants enabling them to conduct sustainable online retailing activity.
MITC said recent published statistics are increasingly supporting a long-held belief that online shopping among Maltese consumers is steadily increasing and therefore there is scope and adequacy for an e-mall infrastructure.
Retailers will have an unprecedented opportunity to showcase their merchandise in an environment accessible by an ever larger segment of the population, who are increasingly turning to the internet to shop around for their necessities.
More specifically, merchants, especially the smaller ones, should be able to reap significant advantages because online presence will give them access to larger markets at par with the larger competitors at marginal investment, limited technical expertise and virtually unlimited visibility, the ministry said.
Through this tender the government is inviting proposals from potential bidders who will be interested to develop and operate a resilient e-mall infrastructure. Besides a state-of- the-art system the proposal should be backed by a sound business model that will guarantee the long-term sustainability of the e-mall.
This is of critical importance in view of the government's firm intention that its role and involvement in the e-mall operation will be completely drawn from the project after the first two years of operation and the successful bidder will therefore have to assume full operational control of the e-mall.
Details of the tender have been published in the Government Gazette of Tuesday, June 24 (CT 147/2008). Interested firms must submit their proposals by not later than 10 a.m. on August 26.
An e-mall is a web-based virtual marketplace which provides an end-to-end solution to participant merchants enabling them to conduct sustainable online retailing activity.
MITC said recent published statistics are increasingly supporting a long-held belief that online shopping among Maltese consumers is steadily increasing and therefore there is scope and adequacy for an e-mall infrastructure.
Retailers will have an unprecedented opportunity to showcase their merchandise in an environment accessible by an ever larger segment of the population, who are increasingly turning to the internet to shop around for their necessities.
More specifically, merchants, especially the smaller ones, should be able to reap significant advantages because online presence will give them access to larger markets at par with the larger competitors at marginal investment, limited technical expertise and virtually unlimited visibility, the ministry said.
Through this tender the government is inviting proposals from potential bidders who will be interested to develop and operate a resilient e-mall infrastructure. Besides a state-of- the-art system the proposal should be backed by a sound business model that will guarantee the long-term sustainability of the e-mall.
This is of critical importance in view of the government's firm intention that its role and involvement in the e-mall operation will be completely drawn from the project after the first two years of operation and the successful bidder will therefore have to assume full operational control of the e-mall.
Details of the tender have been published in the Government Gazette of Tuesday, June 24 (CT 147/2008). Interested firms must submit their proposals by not later than 10 a.m. on August 26.